Field of the Invention
This invention is directed to a packaging for containers such as, for example, syringes or cartridges. Each container notably comprises a cylindrical body, in particular tubular, and “upper surface” located at or near the proximal end of this cylindrical body. This upper surface is generally formed by a flange that can be integrally formed with the cylindrical body or that can be a separate piece mounted on this body.
In this application, the distal end of a component or of a device means the end furthest away from the hand of the user and the proximal end means the end closest to the hand of the user, when the component or device is in the use position. Similarly, in this application, the terms “in the distal direction” and “distally” mean in the direction of the injection, and the terms “in the proximal direction” and “proximally” mean in the direction opposite to the direction of injection.
Discription of Related Art
Often, the containers must be transported from one site to another, when they are manufactured in one site and filled in another site, or, less frequently, when they are manufactured and filled in the same site and must be delivered, once filled, to another site.
For this transportation, the containers are usually put in a “global packaging” comprising a grouping tray or nest, hereinafter “nest”, a packaging tub, hereinafter “tub”, a sealing cover and a plastic bag, hereinafter “header bag” to insure the sterility. The combination of the nest, the tub and the sealing cover will be cited hereinafter as “packaging” while the tub will correspond to an empty tub.
The nest can have various shapes according to the type of containers received: it can comprise openings made through the nest, along the thickness thereof, i.e. these openings extending from an upper surface of the nest to a lower surface thereof. The openings that can be or not coaxially surrounded by chimneys for receiving the cylindrical bodies of the containers with flanges, these flanges leaning on the upper ends of the chimneys. With this kind of nest, cylindrical bodies with flanges (e.g. syringes) are loaded via the upper surface of the nest in order to position them into the openings of such nest. Alternatively, the nest can have specific openings for receiving cartridges that would be in contact with the bottom of the tub. In another embodiment, the nest can have chimneys with closed bottoms for receiving containers without flanges; the nest can also be made in a resilient material and have openings in which the containers are frictionally maintained. In the following description, the nest described is the one with openings coaxially surrounded by chimneys for receiving containers with flanges.
The tub includes a peripheral outer flange levelled with its upper opening, for the sealing of the sealing cover. In use, the nest is placed into the tub which is sealed with a sealing cover and sterilised. Then, series of global packagings are stacked into a box, bottom up, for example, a cardboard or a plastic box with an intermediate sheet placed between two series of global packagings, a series being defined as a row of several global packagings.
The header bag can be a classical header bag (e.g. made of plastic including a porous part). Alternatively, the header bag can have a reinforced part positioned in such manner that the header bag gets a function of load spreader. This reinforced part can be interdependent or not with the bag, it can be in moulded or thermoformed plastic, and it can be placed inside or outside the header bag. This reinforced part can be for example at least one thermoformed plastic plate placed inside the bag below and/or above the tub. This reinforced load spreader header bag protects the containers packaged into the packaging.
When received at destination, the global packagings are extracted from the box and flipped bottom down, the header bag is open, the tub is extracted from the header bag and unsealed. Then, the nests are extracted therefrom and the containers can be filled and/or handled.
Said intermediate sheet is used for distributing the load of an upper series of global packagings on the lower series of global packagings. However, when global packagings are stacked without the intermediate sheet between them to, a load is exerted on the sealing cover of the global packagings. This load can generate a contact of the sealing cover with the containers flanges, and then generate contaminating particles on the containers or lead to the breakage of the flanges.
In addition, the containers user, after removing the global packagings from the box, may want to store some packagings or global packagings and will therefore need to stack them. This may also bring the sealing cover in contact with the flanges of the containers and generate contamination or breakage of the flanges in the same way.
Furthermore, this kind of packaging has the drawback of consuming a large amount of packaging materials, because only fifteen global packagings can be placed in a same box (five stacked series of three global packagings in width, each series being separated one from another by an intermediate sheet) and because intermediate sheets are required. For the containers users, opening many boxes and removing many intermediate sheets is burdensome and time-consuming.
The purpose of the present invention is to overcome these drawbacks.
The main object of the invention is therefore to provide a packaging like described above, which efficiently prevents from any contamination or breakage of the containers flanges when a number of packagings or global packagings are stacked.
Another goal of the invention is to provide a global packaging which reduces the amount of packaging materials used for transportation and give rise to an easier work for opening the box containing these packagings.